After sleeping away a full day’s worth of time, we woke up full of energy and ready to shower. The first activity of the morning was our Chora Church tour through Backpacker’s Travel. We were greeted by a young Turkish tour guide who spoke English like an Australian. She cheerfully relayed the fact that she had locked her friend in her apartment this morning, not realizing she was still there. She was very friendly. Everyone else on our tour was a bit older, but very nice. There was a couple from South Africa and two men from the US.
The whole time we’ve been here, people have been guessing our nationality incorrectly. We’ve been taken for Dutch, Australian, Polish, and Kiwi, but have yet for anyone to guess American. The tour guide explained to us that this is because people automatically think two young girls travelling by themselves are not American. Most of the Americans that travel to Istanbul are old couples, and any young girls are usually from Australia.
Today was Istanbul Conquer Day, which celebrates the Turkish taking over Istanbul 700 years ago. The tour guide kept complaining about the road closures and traffic jams, and apologizing to us for the delays in the tour. Personally, I was excited that we might be able to see some type of celebration that tourists wouldn’t normally get to see. Excitedly, I asked her if this might be the case. Her response was, “No one in Istanbul actually celebrates, we just worry about the traffic jams.” She proceeded to recount the Istanbullu reactions upon hearing the announcement of Obama’s visit; rather than being excited about the president visiting their country, they all grumbled about what awful traffic it would cause. Sure enough, there was plenty of traffic and little celebration, other than a few red banners.
The first stop on the tour was the Fortress of the Seven Towers, or “the dungeon.” This used to be the entrance gates to Constantinople, and then later was converted into a dungeon for rebellious janissaries during the Ottoman era. Disobedient janissaries and foreign ambassadors were be-headed on a daily basis in the dungeon. The heads would be hung on the gates to the sultan’s palace, and the bodies would be dropped through a hole in the ground that led straight to the Sea of Marmara. We had the opportunity to stare down the hole while listening to the story.
The second stop was the Chora Church (pronounced Core-a), a Greek Orthodox church originally built in the 4th century AD. The walls and ceilings were covered with mosaics depicting Jesus and Mary’s lives from birth through death. While listening to our guide tell the stories of each of Jesus’ miracles, I couldn’t help tearing up. The Chora is perhaps the oldest remaining church, and so the paintings are the closest we can come to knowing what Jesus really looked like. It was also nice to finally appreciate some sights from my own religion, after spending so much time in Muslim areas.
We then drove to the largest graveyard I’ve ever seen, on Pierre Loti hill. The graves, which take up an entire mountainside, are dated anywhere from the Byzantine era to modern-times. At the bottom of the hill is the Eyup Sultan Mosque, which contains the tomb of Mohammed’s best friend (Eyup Sultan), and is considered the most holy place in Turkey. The grave plots on Pierre Loti get more and more expensive the closer they are to this mosque. Apparently the Muslims are so infatuated with eternally lying near the resting place of the Eyup that they will pay more than the cost of a house for these plots of land.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go inside the mosque itself, which was small and sweaty and crowded. The most interesting part of the mosque was the people in the courtyard. There were dozens of young boys dressed in sultan outfits, taking pictures. It is Istanbullu tradition to bring your son to this mosque on the day he gets circumcised, which is what all the little sultans and their families were there celebrating. There was a giant tree in the courtyard which had grown around the fence, which was very cool to see as well.
Finally, we stopped at the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch, which is what the tour guide called “The Vatican of the Orthodox.” It was a beautiful church, and ironically when we arrived, there was a wedding taking place. Our tour guide walked us right on in though, and we watched the wedding. There were men singing beautiful, exotic-sounding Orthodox hymns. Although the church was decked out in golden filigree and chandeliers, the coolest part was a plain pillar in the corner. The pillar had been imported from Israel, and is believed to be the pillar that Jesus held while being whipped before carrying his cross. There were also the caskets of three famous women saints, which the Orthodox people would lean over and kiss as they walked by.
By this time in the day, the traffic was horrific, and our tour guide was going to be late for meeting her next tour. She ended up dropping us all off on main roads near our hotels, rather than actually take us back to the entrance. Of course then Treanna and I got lost and walked around for an extra hour in the hot, crowded bazaars, trying to ask for directions and not understanding the Turkish responses.
An adventurous American man on our tour was going on a week-long white-water rafting trip in Southeastern Turkey. He told us he had rafted in Nepal, Brazil, Peru, and Chile, but never in the US.
Adam, the boy from the bank at the airport, met us at our hotel in the afternoon. First we walked to the Hippodrome, then he suggested we see Taksim, which is “where everyone goes.” It was a huge fancy shopping area, which was just as crowded as Sultanahmet. Interestingly enough, our guidebook passed it off as a “leafy and exclusive suburb,” although it was more like a totally hoppin outdoor mall. The highlight of our shopping experience was walking into countless electronic stores trying to find a phone charger, since I somehow managed to leave mine at home.
As part of the European Capital of Culture award, Istanbul docks the International Tall Ship Regatta, with giant sailboats from different countries. We walked along the docks looking at the ships and watching the Omani and Indonesian sailors dance. On our way past the Bulgarian ship, a bunch of the sailors started jumping on the back hull of the ship so that it slapped down into the water and splashed a huge wave in our direction. We got completely soaked, and they thought it was hilarious.
We then ate dinner under the Galata bridge, watching the ships on the Bosphorus make their final tours for the evening. Treanna tried raki, a Turkish grape & anise-seed brandy which tastes similar to Hennessy. She seemed to enjoy it, though I thought it was disgusting.
Now we’re on our way to Antalya on a red-eye flight. Clearly sleeping was not a priority in the planning of this trip.
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